Opinions vary.. Alpline, Eclipse, Kenwood Excelon, the higher models of Clarion.
All depends on which goodies you like then it's a matter of splitting hairs and narrowing the list. If EQ is your thing, you can run up the model line in probably each of the brands to find a minimal model that will suffice. Adding other features you want will narrow it down equally.
To me, it's all about high-quality dac's.. names like Burr-Brown or Wolfson, 24-bit, etc.. Then Good time alignment to each individual speaker and some level of parametric eq and respectible output levels to the RCA outs.. 4V+ Some, including the premier pioneers, now include some auto-tuning of some kind.. such as the 880.
Hope this helps.
